


A Diamond Ring Wrought with Graphite

by kaeropteran



Category: Great Pretender (Anime)
Genre: Cynthia/Laurent if you squint, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeropteran/pseuds/kaeropteran
Summary: She kept the ring as a reminder of what could have been, a memento of the dreams she could no longer fulfill, a keepsake of a man she no longer knew.Spoilers for episodes 10-14 of the anime
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Damsel in Distress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stopped tying her hair in a ponytail a month after she left Thomas.
> 
> How Cynthia changed after leaving Thomas, up to meeting Laurent at the bar

Cynthia stopped tying her hair in a ponytail a month after she left Thomas. 

She exchanged her baggy tees and sweaters for low-collared blouses, replaced her ripped jeans with miniskirts and leggings, and tossed out her old sneakers for bright red heels and leather boots. 

She started wearing makeup a year later. Not the unnoticeable dabs of cream on her skin or the light gloss over her lips that she applied before an audition -- no, she brushed the powder thickly over her eyelids to bring out the violet of her irises, and smeared a bold red across her lips. She looked into the mirror when she was finished, and she wondered if she had piled on enough powder to bury that naive little girl who had fallen for an artist who had asked her to be his model. 

She committed her first con two years after that. It was cliche, really, the oldest trick in the book: the role of the damsel in distress. She no longer remembered how much she got from her first victim, but she was sure that it couldn't have been more than a few bills, a meager and pitiful sum in comparison to the stream of zeros in her bank statements now. 

She always targeted men, since they were the most susceptible to her cocktail dresses, the neckline cut seductively low, and her jackets that she slyly let slip to reveal a bare shoulder. She picked out the timid ones who sat near the fringes of the bar, the ones who reacted most sympathetically to her trembling voice and the tears she made well up in her eyes. She just had to look the helpless fool, offer some cheap praise, and they were all too willing to come to her aid, eating out of her hand like faithful dogs, heedless to how foolish they looked. 

It had been months or perhaps even years since her first con, and Cynthia was barely scraping by with her side jobs -- barista, waitress, conwoman. Her big actress debut was becoming more and more of an impossible dream -- she was lucky if she landed even a minor role, for there seemed to be a never-ending line of younger actresses, prettier, more capable, and with more promise for the future. All she had left for comfort were the few bottles of wine in her cooler and a tin box containing a torn corner of a sketchpad in her fridge. Her drinking buddy, Chris, had left for the States some weeks prior, and she had never felt more lonely. 

So perhaps there was some semblance of truth in her words when she made her voice shake piteously, "I don't know what to do anymore..."

Cynthia cast her gaze down to the smooth wooden counter and buried her face in her hands, letting her leather coat slip further from her right shoulder. "Unless I come up with the money today, I'll lose my father."

She leaned over to grab the arm of the man's fine suit, making sure that her bare shoulder and cleavage were in his full view. 

"Well, how unfortunate." 

She made a sound of surprise when she saw the fat wad of cash he stuck in between her breasts. "Are you sure? This is a lot of money."

"Of course, this is but chicken feed to me.” 

He had the easy voice of a man who was comfortable with women, but for now, she didn't let that concern her. All she had to do was leave as quickly as possible before he began regretting his decision. "Thank you, now I can save my father!"

"What? I thought he died ten years ago." 

She stiffened. "Eh?"

"Your methods are terrible, your acting is so-so, and your tits are being supported by that push-up bra, but, well, you've got potential."

Cynthia glared at him warily. 

He motioned toward the thick stack of bills he had given her. "That's a taste of what you could get if you work for me."

"What kind of work?"

"Work as a con artist."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm overly obsessed with Great Pretender right now. The show is definitely bolstered by its colorful cast, and it is the women, Abby and Cynthia, who really carried the show for me. Cynthia and Thomas's backstory completely took my breath away, and the fact that it ended the way it did -- ahh, this show knows that I'm weak for bittersweet love stories. 
> 
> I wasn't planning to write until after I finished my finals, but the symbolism behind the drawing of the engagement ring completely stole my attention and then this happened. Oops.


	2. Con Artist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I hate guys who draw."
> 
> Sometimes, she wished that regrets, alcohol, or money could turn back time.
> 
> Sometimes, she grew afraid that her wishes were no longer the same as the ones she had yesterday.

Sometimes, in the dead of the night, Cynthia took out the tin case from its unassuming place in her fridge. She would open it, gingerly, and she would stare at the pencil drawing tucked inside under the light of the fridge until goosebumps spread across her skin. Then she would click the box shut and place it back carefully in its spot, on a rack just below eye level, and then reach in for a bottle of wine to wash down the lump in her throat. 

Sometimes, when she couldn't sleep, and she had not yet reached the numb deliriousness of inebriation, her thoughts wandered to pointless _what if_ 's and _if only_ 's. _What if they had not met Coleman that day,_ and _if only she had stayed at his side a little longer and convinced him to see reason._

But, of course, the past was gone, the chance had passed, and no amount of regret, alcohol, or money would bring it back. 

_Now we're both crooks and fakes,_ she thought grimly, taking another swig from her wine bottle. 

Sometimes, Cynthia opened the tin case without thinking, tracing with her eyes the fine lines that gave the object shape and the careful shading that give it dimension, and she would remember the light in Thomas' eyes as he put his brush to canvas, the enthusiasm with which he spoke when he taught her terms like _chiaroscuro_ and the names of painters whose names she could barely pronounce. 

Sometimes, when she let her mind wander too far, she thought it was ironic and strangely poetic that he had drawn a diamond ring with pencil graphite. At the atomic level, they were essentially one and the same; despite its reputation as the most precious stone in the world, a symbol of eternity and indestructibility, the diamond was made up of the same basic components as pencil lead. 

Perhaps it was a fitting metaphor for their relationship. She had thought that theirs was a bond that no one could destroy. But, in the end, they had been nothing more than diamond wrought with graphite, and they had been broken apart as easily as one might the lead of a pencil -- by accident, coincidence, and the capricious force of fate. 

Perhaps that was all their relationship had amounted to in the end: a brittle piece of rock, an artist's inferior grayscale tool that gave way to more colorful paints and synthetic paintbrushes. 

Sometimes, Cynthia opened the tin case out of habit, just to check that her priceless sliver of cheap sketchpad paper had not been the product of a drunken delusion, to remind herself that the dulling pain of the scars in her heart was still there, to stoke the cooling coals of what had once been a conflagration of resentment. She was getting too comfortable, now that she was directing all of her energy to playing some role or another in one of Laurent's reckless stunts. She was, in a way, living her dream -- the female lead in a thriller heist on an improv stage with no retakes, cheating evil into bankruptcy and reaping the rewards of cash, pride, and... surprisingly, a sense of satisfaction. Though Cynthia would rather die than admit it, she actually enjoyed putting her acting skills, and, more often than not, her life on the line to swindle some ignorant bastards out of their undeserved fortunes. 

She had several houses to her name now, an entire island even. She no longer owned a single pair of ripped jeans in her wardrobe. She no longer went without the oily taste of gloss on her lips or the weight of makeup powder on her cheeks. 

She had not thought of Thomas in years.

* * *

Cynthia turned as she heard the scratching of pencil to paper mix with the gentle crashing of waves against the rocky coastline of southern France. 

"Who gave you permission to draw me?" She admonished, catching the sight of the culprit, a blonde bastard looking quickly up at her and then back down again at a sketchpad spread across his lap, a stick of graphite in hand.

"When I see something beautiful, I can't resist the urge to immortalize it."

"What are you trying to say?" She sighed, exasperatedly. They knew each other too well for these games. 

"I'm hitting on you." He replied, matter-of-factly.

"Ah, so you're bored." 

"Come on, it's not a big deal. It's not like you lose anything from it."

Cynthia looked away from him, sticking her hands into her pockets. Nice was a picturesque town, with milder temperatures than London, but winter always brought with it an uncertain weight on her chest and Laurent's actions had conjured up old ghosts of memories she could never completely drown with wine or forget with time. 

"I hate guys who draw."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that I'm reading over it, it's really ironic how the term "con artist" has the word "artist" in there.


	3. Femme Fatale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Painted for her sake was a replica worth all the canned beans in London.

"Montoya's paintings are extremely expensive," Thomas had said to her, eyeing the replica on his wall. 

"Hmm... how much money are we talking about?"

"Uhh... enough to keep us fed with canned beans until we die?"

"I would like some better food than that," Cynthia had snorted, stifling a laugh. "But maybe your paintings will be worth that much someday." 

"When that happens, let's buy out all the canned beans from London." His smile had been framed by golden rays of the rare sun of a London winter.

* * *

"One hundred million!" The choked declaration from Coleman was worth every pence of that price.

Cynthia met eyes with Laurent behind the auctioneer's podium, giving him a slight nod, and he declared the painting sold. 

Her lips curved upward into a smile laced with bittersweet satisfaction. She certainly would not be buying out the canned beans from London, but indeed Thomas' work had come to be worth as much as a Montoya.

* * *

"Cynthia," Edamame handed her a familiar tin box. "Go and settle things with him."

She held the case reverently in her hands, and she barely caught the sight of Laurent, standing silently behind Edamame with a sly but genuine smile. 

She arranged for them to meet at the cafe where she had once worked, the cafe where they had met, the cafe where they had once been innocent, naive, and in love. 

He was sitting at his usual place, the seat at the corner of the room where he had asked her to be his model, and she smiled when he noticed her, shrugging the tension from her shoulders.

They sat at the cafe across mugs of coffee that steamed in the cold winter air of London. They spoke easily and gently, with none of the hostility and disagreement as had surrounded them in those evenings at that high-end restaurant, where they had, in turn, walked out on each other, where he had invited her and they had quarreled, and where she, in retaliation, had ordered the most expensive wine on the menu and failed to convince him to commit a con. Only here in a humble wayside cafe with cheap coffee were they able to sheathe the posturing and hurt pride that they had acquired with fame and wealth. 

For those few, short hours from noon until dusk, she almost felt as if they had returned to that simpler time when she wore no makeup, and he had no beard, when they were both struggling but hopeful, poor but idealistic, innocent and naive. 

But she was no longer a waitress in ripped jeans, an aspiring actress who could barely tell a lie. And he was no longer a hopeful artist starved for fame and money, with the smell of paint on his coats and stains on his fingers. But perhaps with this, they could finally lay to rest those ethereal possibilities of what might have been.

* * *

"Thanks for today," she said. 

"I had fun." He averted his eyes, and she felt a vague sense of deja vu. 

"You still have that habit," she chided. "Maintain proper eye contact when you speak."

He looked up in surprise, hearing the familiar words, and he smiled gently back at her, meeting her eyes. "Stay well, Cynthia."

"You too." They shook hands against the backdrop of an orange sky. 

And then they parted.

They had spent the better part of the decade without one another. She had changed, and he had changed, and though the ghosts of the past could be laid to rest, they no longer knew each other as they once had. 

Cynthia walked along the River Thames until the sky darkened to a deep purple, the street lamps and the light of buildings illuminating the water with quivering hues of red and orange. Standing at the railing, she reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a tin case of taffies with a long overdue expiration date, a poor substitute for a ring box with the torn corner of a sketchpad enclosed within. 

She brushed a thumb tenderly over the raised letters on the cover, folding the memories and the emotions into her heart and locking them away. 

With a flick of her elbow, she tossed over the railing the box that held a ring she had never worn and could never wear, the box that held her bygone youth, a nearly forgotten dream, and the memory of a lover who was now no more than a stranger to her. With an impassive _plop_ , the tin case and its contents disappeared into the depths of the River Thames. 

It was time to move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, not too happy with how this chapter turned out but I needed to get out my thoughts before I get too distracted... But, man, this Cynthia character arc is sooo well-done and poetic; the parallels between the restaurants, the ring that Thomas drew, and how Thomas' replica became that much more valuable by virtue of it not having been sold...
> 
> Might be adding more to or editing this short character-study-esque drabble at some point, but for now, this will do.
> 
> (But also, don't litter. Throw your engagement rings into trash cans not rivers)


End file.
